SOUTH BEND, Washington - Despite the fact that he died in 1997, comedian Pat Paulsen’s campaign manager Tommy Smothers says that Paulsen will run for president as an Independent candidate in 2008.

Pat’s past accomplishments, Smothers says, make him the ideal candidate. A former and current Marine ("once a Marine, always a Marine"), Paulsen had a varied career in public service, working at such jobs as a posting clerk, a truck driver, a hod carrier, a Fuller brush salesman, a gypsum miner, and a Photostat operator. He also ran for president in 1968, 1972, 1976, 1992, and 1996. Although he cannot play the saxophone, as former president Bill Clinton does, Paulsen can play several chords on the guitar and does a fair imitation of Rich Little.

He appeared a few hundred times on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, for which reason the show was censored frequently and finally cancelled. However, in 1968, Paulsen won an Enema Award for his work on the show.

The experiences that best equip him for a White House run, however, Smothers contends, are the fact that he dies of a brain tumor and that, as a corpse, he won’t do much to mess up the Americaneconomy, society, or much of anything else during his tenure as president.

Although some pundits claim that Americans will not vote for a dead president, Smothers reminds such critics that the public voted for Jimmy Carter, who, although not technically dead, is brain dead.

In addition, Paulsen has more of a chance than Hilary Clinton of being elected, Smothers says, because although Americans may be ready to elect a woman as president, they are not ready, yet, at least, to elect a lesbian. If they were, he believes, they’d prefer someone like Ellen Degenerate or Rosie O’Donnell to Hilary. “She’s a victim of the double whammy of being female and lesbian,” says Smothers. “You can’t be both and be elected president of the United States.”

Paulsen’s campaign slogans remain the same as they have been for the many times that he has run for the nation’s highest office in the past: “I’ve upped my standards; now, up yours” and “If elected, I will win.”